ADP: adposition
Definition
The Cantonese ADP covers three categories of function words analyzed as adpositions: (1) prepositions, (2) valence markers, and (3) “localizers”/postpositions.
Prepositions introduce an extra argument to the event/main verb in a clause or give information about the time or the location or direction, etc.
- 佢 喺 2000年 出世 ／ keoi5 hai2 ji6ling4ling4ling4nin4 ceot1sai3 “He was born in year 2000.”
Valence markers such as 將 / zoeng1 and the formal 被 / bei6 are also tagged ADP.
- 你 將 啲 嘢 擺 低 喇 / nei5 zoeng1 di1 je5 baai2 dai1 laa1 “How about you put down that stuff?”
- 兇手 凌晨 一點 被 捕 / hung1sau2 zok3maan5 bei6 bou6 “The murderer was caught at 1am.”
Localizers (also known as 方位詞 / fong1wai2ci4), typically indicate spatial information in relation to the noun preceding it. Some localizers have also grammaticalized into clausal markers indicating temporal information. Localizers with the clausal function are still tagged as ADP (but are labeled with the dependency relation mark).
- 我 擺 咗 啲 梨 喺 枱 度 / ngo5 baai2 zo2 di1 lei2 hai2 toi2 dou6 “I put the pears on the table.”
- 佢 老婆 死 咗 之後 ， 佢 都 唔 想 生存 落去 嘑 / keoi5 lou5po4 sei5 zo2 zi1hau6, keoi5 dou1 m4 soeng2 sang1cyun4 lok6heoi3 laa3 “After his wife died, he no longer wants to go on living either.”
Examples
- Prepositions - 喺 / hai2 “in, on, at”, 畀 / bei2 “to” (recipient), 由 / jau6 “from”, 為咗 / wai6zo2 “for (sake of)”
- Valence markers - 將 / zoeng1, 被 / bei6 (passive)
- Localizers / postpositions - 度 / dou6 “~place”, 之後 / zi1hau6 “after”, 之前 / zi1cin4 “before”, 時 / si4 “during”
ADP in other languages: [bej] [bg] [bm] [cs] [cy] [da] [el] [en] [es] [et] [fi] [fro] [fr] [ga] [gn] [grc] [gub] [hu] [hy] [it] [ja] [ka] [kk] [kpv] [ky] [myv] [no] [pcm] [pt] [qpm] [ru] [sl] [sv] [tpn] [tr] [tt] [uk] [u] [urj] [yue] [zh]